Tetris

Core studio team:

This was a great version of the classic puzzle game. The official guildlines issued by The Tetris Company require developers to implement all sorts of daft game-breaking features in order to get approval, but we used the excuse of lack of screen space to get away with avoiding putting the worst into our version (such as 'hold', and the 'next' queue).

We also avoided putting in distracting backgounds and animations, instead aiming for a modern update which matched the quality of the perfect Game Boy version. With a really nice wireless two player mode, this version got pretty close to our aim.

We were originally asked to write the game to support some new graphics chip which was due to be released, but not only is Tetris the worst possible game to show off graphics hardware, the chip itself was so underpowered that even a game as simple as Tetris couldn't make any use of it.

Warthog were aiming for some bundling deal with hardware manufacturer Hewlett Packard, which would have sold millions of copies, but when that didn't happen, there seemed to be no desire to try and get the game out through a conventional publisher, or as a download, so this version was never released. Other versions of Tetris seem to be available on this platfrom though.

What a waste of time and effort.